I finally got a torque wrench for myself. Now I can make
sure that I'm putting the crank bolt on to the right
tightness. No more guessing.
I became paranoid with my new Coker wheel. It's an expensive
wheel and I didn't want to mess it up by either stripping
the threads putting a crank on too tight or damaging the
tapers by putting a crank on too loose. Time to bite the
bullet and buy a torque wrench. A torque wrench is cheaper
than a new wheel.
I had thought torque wrenches were expensive which is why I
didn't have one. The lower cost beam style torque wrenches
I'd seen were about $40 and the fancy micrometer style
torque wrenches were over $70. Too much for me as just a
casual home mechanic.
Torque wrenches don't have to be that expensive. I found a
'Craftsman beam style torque wrench'
(tinyurl.com2wz8lOpen ↗) at Sears for under $20. It
happened to be on sale for 20% off at the time I bought it
so it was even less. Cool deal. Under $20 puts it in the
affordable for the casual home mechanic range. The clicking
style micrometer torque wrenches are nice, but overkill for
casual home use. The beam style works just fine and there
are fewer moving parts to worry about.
If you have a small fleet of unicycles and you worry at all
about how tight to get that crank nut, get a torque wrench.
They aren't that expensive and you can get a good
inexpensive one at your local Sears store.
I'll be sleeping a lot better now that I'm not having
nightmares about ruining the hub on my custom Coker wheel.
--
john_childs - Guinness Mojo
john_childs (at) hotmail (dot) com
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